the bare Iowa prairie, where the
ploughed fields were already turning warm and brown, and only here and
there in a corner or on the north side of the fence did the sullen
drifts remain, and they were so dark and low that they hardly appeared
to break the mellow brown of the fields.

There passed also an occasional flock of geese, cheerful harbingers of
spring, and the prairie-chickens had set up their morning symphony,
wide-swelling, wonderful with its prophecy of the new birth of grass and
grain and the springing life of all breathing things. The crow passed
now and then, uttering his resonant croak, but the crane had not yet
sent forth his bugle note.

Lyman Gilman rested on his axe-helve at the woodpile of Farmer Bacon to
listen to the music around him. In a vague way he was powerfully moved
by it. He heard the hens singing their weird, raucous, monotonous song,
and saw them burrowing in the dry chip-dust near him. He saw the young
colts and cattle frisking in the sunny space around the straw-stacks,
absorbed through his bare arms and uncovered head the heat of the sun,
and felt the soft wooing of the air so deeply that he broke into an
unwonted exclamation:--

"Glory! we'll be seeding by Friday, sure."

This short and disappointing soliloquy was, after all, an expression of
deep emotion. To the Western farmer the very word "seeding" is a poem.
And these few words, coming from Lyman Gilman, meant more and expressed
more than many a large and ambitious springtime song.

But the glory of all the slumbrous landscape, the stately beauty of the
sky with its masses of fleecy vapor, were swept away by the sound of a
girl's voice humming, "Come to the Saviour," while she bustled about the
kitchen near by. The windows were open. Ah! what suggestion to these
dwellers in a rigorous climate was in the first unsealing of the
windows! How sweet it was to the pale and weary women after their long
imprisonment!

As Lyman sat down on his maple log to hear better, a plump face appeared
at the window, and a clear, girl-voice said:--

"Smell anything, Lime?"

He snuffed the air. "Cookies, by the great horn spoons!" he yelled,
leaping up. "Bring me some, an' see me eat; it'll do ye good."

"Come an' get 'm," laughed the face at the window.

"Oh, it's nicer out here, Merry Etty. What's the rush? Bring me out
some, an' set down on this log."

With a nod Marietta disappeared, and soon came out with a plate of
cookies in one h